I've always figured that the media, with all its polling trying to explain the rise of Trump, never once asked a simple elementary question of its polled voters. It's pretty obvious.

"Was your vote based on a candidate's celebrity?"

They won't ask this question for an obvious reason. It would mean that all of the political analysis and studies into the voting metrics and patterns of the republic and all the research they do is meaningless.

Maybe millions of people voted for Reagan not because they agreed with his politics but because they'd like his movies. Maybe the reason W was elected was not because of his political leanings but because they thought 'like father, like son." Maybe millions of people voted for Trump not because they agree with his rhetoric but because they'd seen him on a reality show for years or in WWF. Maybe at the end of the day politics isn't as complicated as the media wants you to think is. People want to say elections aren't popularity contests, they're about policy. I'm not sure they are now or ever have been. I think at the end of the day people vote for slogans, famous faces and names, nothing more. Very cynical even for an American. But as a historian, I'm beginning to think it may be true.